Archive for June, 2011

Time magazine’s Mark Halperin has been indefinitely suspended as an MSNBC analyst after he called President Obama a “dick” on this Thursday’s Morning Joe . “Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the president, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst,” MSNBC said in a statement. Halperin, in his own statement, said, “I completely agree with everything in MSNBC’s statement about my remark. I believe that the step they are taking in response is totally appropriate. Again, I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the president, to my MSNBC colleagues, and to the viewers. My remark was unacceptable, and I deeply regret it.” Time magazine also voiced its disapproval in a statement, but stopped short of punishing Halperin: "Mark Halperin’s comments on air this morning were inappropriate and in no way reflective of Time ’s views. We have issued a warning to him that such behavior is unacceptable. Mark has appropriately apologized on air, via Twitter, and on The Page." The offending remark was uttered during a discussion of the president’s conduct at a press conference.

Time magazine’s Mark Halperin has been indefinitely suspended as an MSNBC analyst after he called President Obama a “dick” on this Thursday’s Morning Joe . “Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the president, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst,” MSNBC said in a statement. Halperin, in his own statement, said, “I completely agree with everything in MSNBC’s statement about my remark. I believe that the step they are taking in response is totally appropriate. Again, I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the president, to my MSNBC colleagues, and to the viewers. My remark was unacceptable, and I deeply regret it.” Time magazine also voiced its disapproval in a statement, but stopped short of punishing Halperin: "Mark Halperin’s comments on air this morning were inappropriate and in no way reflective of Time ’s views

With juicy crime shows like Law & Order: SVU on hiatus for the summer, viewers in search of a drama-filled court case have turned their attention to a real-life event: the Casey Anthony murder trial. The public obsession with the proceedings has propelled HLN to its highest-rated month ever in June, beating out MSNBC in primetime and total day for the month, and even topping usual winner Fox News in the 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. hours when trial testimony was at its height, according to the Hollywood Reporter . HLN’s seemingly constant trial coverage has averaged 982,000 total viewers, 292,000 of which fall within the 25 to 54 year-old target demographic, adding up to year-over-year gains of 86 percent and 79 percent, respectively. In total day, says the Reporter , HLN averaged 601,000 total viewers with 192,000 in the target demographic for year-over-year gains of 98 and 48 percent. The network’s biggest winner has been Nancy Grace, who has been leading HLN’s trial coverage. The court case has given Grace an enormous ratings bump for her primetime show, with viewership rising more than 80 percent to 1.5 million total viewers and 452,000 viewers in the key demographic in June — putting her second only to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly in the 8 p.m. cable news slot. For the quarter, HLN posted primetime gains of 12 percent in total viewers year-over-year, up to 549,000, and 8 percent in the target demographic, to 170,000.

In Today's Issue Prime-Time Metered Market Wednesday Ratings: Easy Victory for NBC Ratings Box: What’s Hot/What’s Not On Tonight: Prime-Time Programming Options TV Tidbits: Notes of Interest TV Trivia: No Families in the Drama ____________________________________________________________ PRIME-TIME METERED MARKET WEDNESDAY RATINGS: Easy Victory for NBC Wednesday 6/29/11 NBC: 6.1/11, Fox: 4.3/ 7, CBS: 4.0/ 7, ABC: 2.8/ 5, CW: 0.6/ 1 Percent Change From the Year-Ago Evening (Wednesday 6/30/10): NBC: +16, ABC: + 8, CBS: + 3, Fox: -10, CW: -33 Yesterday’s Winners: The Voice (NBC), America’s Got Talent (NBC) Disappointing: Love in the Wild (NBC) Repeat Count: 54 percent of the lineup were encore telecasts. Ratings Breakdown: It was another Wednesday of overnight dominance for NBC thanks to the season finale of The Voice (#1: 7.4 rating/14 share at 8 p.m.), which returns for Season 2 in January 2012, and a one-hour edition of America’s Got Talent (#1: 8.5/14 at 9 p.m.). In series-premiere news, however, NBC reality/competition Love in the Wild came tumbling down, with a second-place 4.0/ 7 at 10 p.m. Although the lead-in support from America’s Got Talent is likely to result in an adult 18-49 time period victory for Love in the Wild at 10 p.m., overnight retention out of the 9:30 p.m. portion of America’s Got Talent (8.6/14) was only 47 percent. (Under 50 percent is never a positive.) At Fox, another two-hour edition of So You Think You Can Dance came in at a 4.3/ 7 in the overnights from 8-10 p.m., which dipped by 10 percent year-to-year. CBS aired encore telecasts of Undercover Boss (#3: 2.8/ 5), which will return midseason on an unspecified day and time, Criminal Minds (#3: 4.1/ 7), and CSI , which moved into its new Wednesday 10 p.m

Nearly a year after News Corp. first made moves to acquire British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate has finally gotten the go-ahead for a takeover from the U.K. government provided that they make some concessions, reports the Wall Street Journal . On March 3, U.K. culture secretary Jeremy Hunt gave provisional approval to the deal after News Corp. offered to spin-off BSkyB's 24-hour news channel, Sky News, into an independent listed company. Months of negotiations between News Corp., Hunt, and government regulators followed, and Hunt confirmed Thursday that he had agreed to let News Corp. continue with its Sky News plan to avoid further investigation by the U.K.’s competition regulator, but that he would require a “more robust set of undertakings,” says the Guardian . These new measures include Sky News having an independent director with senior journalism expertise attend any board meetings where editorial decisions are made; requiring that Sky continue to cross-promote the 24-hour news service on its other channels; and appointing a monitoring trustee to make sure that News Corp. complies with these measures during the spin-off process. In addition, all of Sky News' articles of association will have to be approved by the culture secretary. The deal's opponents, who fear that it will give Murdoch too much power over the local media industry, have been given a week to raise objections, but an approval looks likely now that government regulators have said that the proposal was sufficient to ensure media plurality. If the deal is approved, News Corp. and BSkyB will only have to negotiate a price. But the longer the deal takes, the more expensive it will become for News Corp. thanks to BSkyB’s recent strong financial performance. There has been speculation that a deal could be reached at around 14 cents per share, costing News Corp. about $2.9 billion more than its original proposal of $12 billion. And because of an agreement that the two companies made last year, if a deal isn’t settled in five months, Murdoch will have to pay BSkyB another

Flipboard , the social magazine iPad app, has incorporated content from another social network, LinkedIn — adding the professional network’s industry news to previous integrations with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr. A new version of Flipboard to be released this morning also includes an interface refresh that makes it easier to browse content and to read continuously from one story to the next.

TELEVISION pitchmen for quirky products like Pajama Jeans and lighted slippers once tried to get viewers to place their orders by phone and then shifted to getting products into retail outlets with labels that screamed “As Seen on TV.” Now, they are trying to make impulse buying even easier by experimenting with new technologies.
Cellphones are one tool some marketers are embracing to sell products quickly from TV sets.
“Because we come from the world of video and TV, who better than us?” asked Kevin Harrington, founder of a direct response marketing company, TVGoods.
Mr. Harrington, one

Film News: Two subsids take StudioCanal name -- Vivendi-owned StudioCanal is taking one more step toward European studio status, rebranding its U.K. and German subsids Optimum Releasing and Kinowelt with its own moniker.

By Shan Li, Los Angeles Times
The futuristic square bar codes, commonly known as quick response, or QR, codes, are sprouting up everywhere — on billboards, in store displays, on packaging and in newspaper and magazine ads.
Invented in Japan in 1994, the technology has recently gained traction among U.S. retailers and other companies as an innovative way to reach consumers. Once scanned with a smartphone or tablet camera, the codes prompt your device to open a Web page, play a video or even place a call.
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The mysterious boxes that are popping up everywhere
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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.